THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MUSIC PREFERENCE IN THE DIGITAL ERA

A COMPARATIVE AND CREATIVE LOOK AT THE PSYCHOSOCIAL EXPERIENCE OF MUSIC

Summative Statement

This article is a complied analysis of music and platform preferences as evaluated from a psychological perspective. The emotions that tie us to music are strong and engrained in our neurological responses. Therefore, examining how these stimulations to music manifest themselves in our brains and asking what that information can further tell us about personal preference in music and therefor media, is important to both understanding our engagement with media, and medias engagement with us.

In our daily experience with music, media platforms and multiple elements of software, coding, algorithms and technology are essential to the experience of producing and listening to music. The app or platform, its organization and set up programmed by the coders and web designers, the music content, the production of music, the engagement with a device to play music, the art that goes along with the music, and the earphones you put in your ears, all engage in the process of listening to music; making the musical experience highly linked to digital media and integral to the question: are you are a gadget? Or better phrased and answered by this article, “Through our psychological response to music, and engagement in the media that supports it, are we all gadgets?”

Methodology

This project was a comparative study that began with an initial 30-question survey that was utilized to gather user preference statistics on when, where, how, and with whom people listened to music. Further questions were asked about genre, platform, and engagement preferences.

The question list included:

1. What genres of music do you listen to on a weekly basis?
2. What is your favorite genre?
3. What platforms have you used in the past week?
4. What is your favorite music platform?
5. When do you typically listen to your music?
6. What do you listen to music through?
7. What type of headphones do you use when you use headphones?
8. What platforms have you used in the past week?
9. What is your favorite music platform?
10. Why is your favorite music platform your platform of choice?
11. What type of radio do you listen to?
12. Do you listen to music...
13. Do you love music?
14. Do you enjoy music?
15. When you listen to music are you interacting with the platform directly (i.e. are you on your phone on the app, or online on the website), or do you passively listen (i.e. press play and just let the cue of music go)
16. Shuffle, Queue, or Playlist?
17. With playlists do you...
18. When you make playlists do you...
19. How long do you keep a playlist before moving to a new one?
20. For the playlist cover artwork do you...
21. Do you listen to your music...
22. How often do you look for new music?
23. How do you find new music?
24. Do you watch music videos?
25. Do the music videos make you feel or think differently about the song/music?
26. What types of music videos do you enjoy most?
27. Do you follow any music artists on social media?
28. If so, how many on average?
29. How many 'favorite' music artists do you have?

From here, questions were eliminated where no significance was found, and remaining questions and responses were broken down into one of three categories to each be analyze differently:

-Genre Preference
The idea of ‘genre preference’ of music being a semi-predictable element of personality will be supported by psychological studies from the U.S., Spain, Japan and Germany about music and cognition. The Big Five personality traits will be used to generally frame user genre preferences.
-Platform Preference
The initial survey will be compared with current and relevant statistics about user preferences, engagement, downloads, and platform revenue for comparison. The initial survey will be significant to compare to larger simple random samples, as the initial survey roughly represents the demographic of Emory University. The success or limitations of this will be analyzed.
-Engagement
Several questions will be specifically looked at to break down ‘passive’ and ‘active’ engagement in music and the digital mediums surrounding music. The multiple elements of engagement with music will be examined. From here, the question will be answered, are we gadgets?

Demographic

For this comparative analysis, an initial 30-question survey was utilized. 25 to 29 participants responded, ranging from ages 10 to 75. The demographic breaks down roughly:

-10-15 year olds: 1
-15-20 year olds: 9 to 11
-20-30 years old: 10 to 12
-30-40 years old: 1
-40-50 years old: 1
-50-60 years old: 1
-60-75 years old: 1

Participants ranged from 25-29 as there were 3 surveys to participate in.

Survey 1- 29 participants

Survey 2- 26 participants

Survey 3- 25 participants

Taking the results from this initial survey, and keeping in mind its limitations, each question was analyzed through one of the three categories above; genre preference, platform preference, and engagement. Each question was then either compared with Psychology study about the cognitive effects of music on the brain, with an existing statistic about the music industry, or classified through measurements of engagement levels.

Limitations

A limitation surrounding the initial survey used and the authenticity of the data it produced was the geographic confinements of Atlanta, primarily Emory University. A few responders acted as outliers and give input from out-of-state. Therefore, this survey cannot be fully representative of population preferences due to the selective nature of the environment.

In creating the survey there were further limitations in defining music genre, as the scope and length in the number of genres available spanning time is quite infinite. For example, when defining ‘Jazz’ as a genre, this classification could range from the 1930’s and 40’s music of Louis Armstrong, or the post-bop and avant-garde era of the 1960’s and 70’s, or the sweet, melancholy jazz voice of Amy Winehouse in the 2000’s. However you define ‘jazz’, this definition interplays into the choice, or lack thereof, of that genre as a preference, displaying the ambiguity to the true scope of the numbers based on internal, subjective definitions of genre themselves. To balance this ambiguity, a study is included that measures musical preferences by asking participants about preferential reactions to musical stimuli in a variety of genres and subgenres.

There are further demographic limitations in the initial survey, including that the age range is highly skewed towards college students, and the ethnic breakdown of the respondents was not recorded. Because of this, larger studies will be used as comparison with the initial survey to give contrast, provide a better SRS representation, and to show the continuities and differences that are a result of the limitation of Emory University as the demographic pool.

The Psychology of Music Preference

Are We Gadgets?

by Madelon Morford

As I walked around campus, earphones in, the world tuned out, blasting my music, I suddenly paused to look around. I saw a mix of people, each displaying different levels of engagement with their phones and surroundings while listening to music and traveled to class. Some students were fully engaged with their phones and had both earphones in, some had one earphone in and were talking to their friends, and some didn’t listen to music at all. So, I wondered… how do people negotiate when, where, how and with whom they listen to music?

In answering this initial question about when, where, and how people negotiate their experiences with music, I also asked people about their genre, platform, and engagement preferences. I was instantly taken away by the topic and idea of music preference, and I wondered how we negotiate these elements in our daily experiences with music and our interaction with digital media to access that music. What drives us to prefer some music over others? Is there a positive link between cognition and music? What types of people are likely to prefer certain genres? From there, what do we know about user preferences for existing platforms that offer music? What can preference and statistics tell us about our engagement with digital media platforms from which we access music? And finally, in our engagement with music through digital mediums, have we become gadgets?

Technology and Music

In examining our engagement with digital media during our experience with music, we must first look at the progression of digital technology that leads us to the current context we find ourselves in. Thomas Edison invented the first music recording and transmission device in 1877, called the phonograph, with the ability to record and play a song once, through a cone-shaped speaker. The technological music market became fairly stagnant after the invention of the Gramophone, or Record Player, in the 1890’s, with the addition of Gramophone Records in the 20th century.

The 1970’s marked the emergence of cassette tapes that spurred the rapid four-decade rush of technological invention. The mid-1990’s also marked the rise of tech companies trying to merge television and internet (Hilderbrand, 2007). This had huge implications for the music industry, as music videos and music would be able to be available on a digital media platform that people can interact with. But it was not until the next ten years when digital developments such as DVDs, DVRs CDs, video-on-demand services, and iPods contributed to the changes we now see in the ways we consume music and television. During the 1980’s and 1990’s the Walkman, CDs, Mini Disk Players, Smartphones, iPod, iTouch, and iPhones were released into the market. In our expansion of music technology, we see the emerging ideals of 1. Making devices more user friendly and efficient, 2. Making devices more personalized, 3. Making technology smaller, thinner, and faster.

Today, we find ourselves surrounded by platforms with millions of music options offered on multiple phone and computer devices, with the availability of speakers and earphones to fit every need, and the ability to directly interact with the technology as we listen. In this music experience, we have moved from a single-played song transmission to a multitude of transmission options. We have shifted from the broad, inclusive speaker of the phonograph that likely was rare, mystified, and drew groups of people together at the time of its invention, to today’s more individualized modes of listening to music that are widespread and common in society. We have media platforms with the ability to follow artists, create music, disseminate music, buy music event tickets, and indulge ourselves in the experience of music more than previously offered before by technology. In this, our experience of music has gotten more close and personal, individualized, and digitized, making us inherently linked closer to the music through the media with which we experience it.

In reference to our ‘closer’ experience to music in the digital era, Alice Marowick cites the historical notion of ‘fandom’, as it was often a criticized trait. But this previous ideology has been replaced today by the multitude people engaging in creating and producing blogs, selfies, web videos, photographs, short films, music, fiction, and so forth, shifting the relationship from media consumption to production in their interaction with music. “The new media technologies that enable participatory culture—mobile apps, video editing software, blogs, digital cameras, Garageband—similarly facilitate personal content creation and dissemination.” (Marowick, 2015)

The goosebumps begin to rise,

the heart races.

You start to want to bust a move,

or scream a lyric.

The tension builds, up,

up and up.

And it finally it hits the climax . . . . . . . .

And.

The.

leaves your BODY and

SOUL, moving to the

BEAT

of the WAVES

of SOUND.

The vibration

The chills

The release.

and suddenly, you’re not alone.

connected to the world,

one with nature.

the consciousness of music,

the biology that moves us. . .

The experience that catalyzes us.

Have you ever experienced something similar to that that resonates?

I’m almost positive you have.

In looking at what influences our individual music preferences, psychological, individual, and situational experiences all play a role in the formation of an individual’s preference palette. On the most basic level of the positive cognitive effects of music, listening and experiencing music leads to improved IQ (Forgeard et al., 2008), improved happiness (Ferguson and Sheldon (2013), higher satisfaction (themselves (Eerola & Eerola, 2013), moderates stress and anxiety (Bradt & Dileo, 2009), helps facilitate well-developed color expression (Palmer et al. (2013), and uplifts moods by seeing others ‘happy’ faces (Logeswaran et al., 2009). The experience of music engages perceptual processing, affective reactivity, intellectual interpretation and prediction as well. “Feeling the chills” is one innate biological reaction our bodies have that stems from our powerful experiences with music, and over 90% of us have experienced this phenomenon when listening to music (Nusbaum and Silvia, 2010).

Beyond the psych’s influences on music, platform, and engagement preferences, individual and situational influences also drive our musical preferences. Gender, age, season of the year, familial relations, self-views, and mood all influence the way we chose and perceive our experience with music. For instance, women are more likely than men to respond to music in a more emotional way and prefer more popular music more than males. In a study from 1997, males demonstrated more preference for bass music than females did (Rawlings, Ciancarelli, Oct 1997). This preference for ‘bass music’ was correlated with antisocial behavior and borderline personalities, further exemplifying and linking the social dimensions of gender with the biological, psychological, social, and environmental dimensions of personality and music preference (McCown, Keiser, 1997). Self-view is another important component of music preference that is highly linked to emotional well-being and cognition. Music allows for self-identification and exploration in defining individual identity and personality. For example, individuals with a conservative self-view preferred conventional styles of music, while individuals with an athletic self-view preferred vigorous music (Rentfrow, Gosling, Jan 2003).

The strong emotions I’ve expressed above that tie many of us to the experience of music, along with the interactions I saw between students and their music platforms on campus, led me to formulate the topic of the Psychology of Music Preferences. Analysis of this topic will effectively answer the question, ‘Are We Gadgets?’, by engaging media participants in answering questions about their preferences and engagement with music. These responses will be carefully compared to previous and current research studies that lend statistics and frameworks about how music preference is formulated and what platforms are statistically popular. The Big Five personality traits will be used as the basic framework for looking at genre preferences, as it is most commonly used in numerous studies on music and cognition.

Digital Media in Music

Today, we have growing access to a multitude of platforms that offer diverse amounts of music in quantity and genre, each offering different modes of experiencing music. From playlists to radio, shuffle, queue, pre-made playlists, sharing, and streaming away from Wi-Fi, we now have the ability to cater our musical experiences to our personal preference. With smartphones, tablets, laptops, and touch screen music players, we are able to seamlessly interact with technology and music. The extension of earphones, earbuds, beats, wireless earphones, Bluetooth earphones, and speakers has further allowed us to make the experience of listening to music personal and portable on-the-go.

In 2011, the rise of subscription and streaming from online and app platforms made its emergence into popularity. Over the next six years, subscriptions and streaming took precedent over other forms of listening to music such as album downloads, single downloads, and CDs. On the market today, Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, SoundCloud, and YouTube are growing rapidly in popularity, with Google Play, Tidal, Prime, and other platforms offered as well. These platforms have followed in suit of other companies by collecting and analyzing user data based on the things people listen to. The platforms then generate playlists, recommend songs, and formulate radio stations that go along with the user’s preferences and what the app thinks the listener will want to hear. This allows for us to stay in constant interaction with the platform in finding and listening to our music, because the platforms make finding music we enjoy easier. These formulations allow the platforms to give good recommendations to their customers to keep them satisfied and listening.

These algorithms, that measure usage and preferences, adds a further element of digital media to the picture of our experience with music, the internal structure that is important in matching users with music. But does this minimization of our music into numbers and data that then go into predict our future preferences, preferences that are inherently linked to our personality, also make the digital experience of music linked to our bodies as well? If these platforms can generate music for you based on the preferences of what you and people similar to you listen to, are they inherently becoming digital extensions of ourselves and our personalities? OR, has music always worked to separate and define, but also bring people with similar identities together, even before the presence of digital media and its ability to generate predictable personal music preferences?

Framework of Analysis

In our experience with music, we all have a certain taste. A notion of what we do and do not ‘like’. This is in part driven by external influences such as individual and situational experiences as discussed before, but what else drives our preferences for listening and choosing music?

Three topical classifications will be used to analyze the psychology of music in this article:

1. Genre preferece
-Genre will be analyzed within the ‘Big Five Personality Traits’ framework to look at how personality influences preference of music genre.
2. Platform preferences
-Platforms will be analyzed in reference to current and relevant statistics about popularity, users, and revenue. These statistics will be contrasted with the statistics gathered from the initial 30-question survey that was sent to primarily Emory students and faculty.
3. Engagement with Digital Medium
-Engagement with digital medium while listening to music will be broken down in terms of active and passive engagement. Initial survey responses will be distinguished using this dichotomy, as the questions were framed to instigate an either/or response, as well as measure specific levels of engagement.

The Big Five Personality Traits

Genre Preference

The figure above works to exemplify the stylistic differences in music genre and visually represent the spectrum of genre differences. The ranging tempos and melodies of the contrasting genres add to the stylistic value of the genre, and make its distinct classification clear for listeners. These differences in musical composition, both lyrically and instrumentally, frame people’s preferences and allow for further distinctions between genres and sub genres.

These different tempos can also be translated into genre preferences through common personality traits of the listener. Below, we see the brains response when listening to music, versus the brains response at rest. It is obvious that the brains auditory cortex, cerebrum, cerebellum, and limbic system are highlighted and actively engaged while listening to music.

Expectedly, different regions of the brain are engaged when listening to different genres of music, as exemplified by the figure below. So, what are the personality, or psychological traits, that predict genre music preference?

Common relevant studies that measure music genre preference were conducted in the U.S., Japan, Germany, and Spain, and provide research support for analysis of music preference based on the Big Five personality traits. These Big Five traits include: openness to experience, agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness. Overall, these studies found that openness to experience and extraversion affect music preferences more than their personality counterparts: agreeableness, neuroticism, and conscientiousness.

Openness to experiences was shown to have the greatest effects on music preference, with respondents preferring ‘complex and novel’ music such as jazz, classical, and intense rebellious music. A facet of openness to experience is aesthetic appreciation, posing a high correlation between openness and preference for complex music.

Extraversion was also a good predictor of music preference, with extraverts preferring happy, upbeat, and conventional music with energetic rhythms such as in rap, hip hop, electronic, and dance music. Anything with a fast tempo and melody is good for an extraverts’ taste. Further, extraverts displayed an intense emotional response to music they had never listened to before, showing a high emotional intensity towards music.

In contrast to openness to experience, Conscientiousness is negatively correlated with intense and rebellious music such as rock and heavy metal. On the other hand, while Neuroticism predicts preference less than openness and extraversion, neuroticism does lend people who prefer upbeat and conventional music, such as country, sound tracks, and pop music. Similar to extraversion, neuroticism is positively correlated with emotional use of music, with a high emotional response to both positive and negative music.

Beyond these five personality traits predicting music preference, a more recent study in 2015 found that individuals with more empathetic cognitive styles preferred "mellower" music with lower arousal and more emotional depth, such as R&B. Those with systemizing cognitive styles, on the other hand, preferred more intense music, with heavy percussion and fast tempo.

Statistics & Initial Survey

Platform Preference

The digital medium platforms mentioned and analyzed in the initial survey and in the overall cross comparison include: Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, Pandora, Youtube, Tidal, iHeartRadio, and Google Play. Subscriptions to each of the platforms range from $9.99 to $14.99/month for premium memberships and commercial-free listening. Over 11 million individuals subscribed to one or more of these platforms in the year 2016, with the platforms offering catalogs of up to 30 million songs. To understand why platform preference broke down the way it did statistically, we must first look at what each platform has to offer in comparison to one another.

Spotify

Spotify has a free version of the app that allows advertisements, and a premium membership that offers ad-free listening and free-range playlist creation. The premium membership costs $10/month with special deals for family and student members. Spotify currently serves over 75 million, with 30 million paying subscribers in 2016.

Pandora

Pandora also has free services that allow the listener to create and listen to radio stations, as well as Pandora One, their premium version that costs $4.99/month. The platform currently caters to 80 million users and has over 1 million songs in their library.

Google Play

Google Play offers a music platform where users can upload up to 50,000 songs for free to their libraries. The paid version of Google Play costs $9.99/month and includes a YouTube Red, a YouTube subscription service without ads. There is no current user estimate for Google Play, but the platforms catalog holds over 30 million songs.

Tidal

Tidal’s platform has two levels of cost, $9.99/month for Tidal Premium, or $19.99/month for Tidal HiFi which claims to offer higher-quality sound. Both paid versions are ad free and offer 30 million songs with 75,000 music videos. The platform has a following of about 3 million.

SoundCloud

Finally, with SoundCloud, users have access to unlimited music with the free version, but must pay $9.99/month for ad-less listening. SoundCloud offers a unique experience for the user as artists are able to post their work on the platform, and often gain popularity from the apps network. SoundCloud’s library is expanding daily from the 125 million it reported in 2016.

*The key element in subscribing to any of these platforms for music is the grantee of no ads, unlimited music, and data roaming abilities, allowing the app to function and download away from Wi-Fi.

In contrast with the results yielded from the initial survey, current and relevant visual statistics about app usage, platform preferences, and annual revenue give a larger and more random sample of the inputs and outputs of various platforms. These statistics will anchor platform preference data, and provide contrast to what was represented in my small-scale survey.

The initial survey found that in the last week 48.2% of respondents used Spotify (14), 41.37% used Apple Music (12), followed by 24.1% listened to Pandora (7), 24.1% listened to SoundCloud (7), 3% used YouTube (1), and 3% cited they used Tidal (1) within the last week.

When it came to ranking favorite platforms, Spotify reigned #1 with 51.7% of respondents (15) preferring it as their favorite platform, 37.93% preferred Apple Music, 6.89% cited Pandora as their favorite, and 3% responded that SoundCloud was their favorite music platform.

From the initial survey, it was found that people most frequently listen to and preferred Spotify, followed by Apple Music, Pandora and SoundCloud. The questions regarding platform were split up into ‘What platforms have you listened to in the last week’ and ‘What is your favorite platform’, to distinguish between frequency and preference of platform use. While one platform may statistically score high in frequency of use, this may not be reflected in the same nature when questioning favorite preference.

Initial Survey (Dec, 2017)

In contrasting this initial survey with other studies that utilized larger SRS samples, figures below show that Pandora was ranked highest in revenue, competing with Spotify for the top spot. Statistics found that cost was the number one factor in determining people’s platform preferences, making Pandora’s free platform option number one for the majority, as they offer free radio features interplayed with paid ads that drive up their platforms revenue. Although revenue might not directly reflect platform preference choices, due to the mix of the paid and unpaid nature of music apps, it does display a trend in usage that is important in marking platform popularity and successes from a consumer standpoint.

In contrast to revenue, based on downloads, Spotify came out at #1, followed closely by Pandora and SoundCloud. The frequency of downloads based on these statistics mirrors the user preference in the initial survey for Spotify, but the revenue ranking highlights a contrast in what was represented in the initial surveys data.

In contrast to the results that found that cost was the number one factor in people preference for music platforms, in the initial survey when people were asked about why they chose specific platforms as their favorites, cost was not an answer or factor in any of the responses, showing a main difference between the initial surveys demographic and a more random sample. The most commonly stated reasons in the initial survey for choosing specific platforms as favorites were 1. Ease of use of the app or platform 2. Selection of music on the platform 3. Ability to make playlists on the platform 4. The platform syncs with all devices 5. Can hear friend’s music on the platform 6. It has the best algorithm to find music 7. The platforms app care 8. Has a ‘radio’ feature 9. Good playlists are already available on the platform, and 10. Playlists are added daily to the platform.

Passive and Active

Engagement with Digital Medium

In asking about preferences of when, where, why, how, and with whom people listen to music, there a dichotomy was shown in the answer responses. Some responses displayed what was referenced earlier with listening to music with both earphones in, full immersion in the music, and interaction with a digital device and platform at the time of listening to access that music. Others expressed talking to friends while they listened to music, passively listening through one earphone, or not interacting with their devices as they listened. This dichotomy became to be formed in relation to passive versus active engagement with music. This split between active and passive engagement in listening to music and interacting with digital mediums went beyond just the engagement, or lack of, with earphones or engagement with people in the vicinity around the listener. The dichotomy came to characterize more than this, instead spanning to investigating the level of the listeners engagement with artists on social media, effort to watch music videos, methods of finding and searching for music, and desire to add artwork to their music playlists.

The questions that highlighted this difference in passive vs. active engagement included:

1. What do you listen to music through?
-i.e. earphone, speaker, computer, etc.
2. What type of headphones do you use when you use headphones?
-i.e. in-the-ear buds, over-the-head headphones, beats, wireless, Bluetooth, etc.
3. Do you love music?
-Yes or no; Clear passive / active dichotom
4. Do you enjoy music?
-Yes or no; Clear passive / active dichotom
5. When you listen to music are you interacting with the platform directly (i.e. are you on your phone on the app, or online on the website), or do you passively listen (i.e. press play and just let the cue of music go)
-Active or Passive; Clear passive / active dichotomy
6. For the playlist cover artwork do you...
-i.e. add your own artwork, add pictures from the internet, leave the artwork as is, let the app generate the playlist artwork, etc.
7. How often do you look for new music?
-How engaged are you in finding new material?
-Measurement of frequenc
8. How do you find new music?
-From friend’s music, app generated playlists, by yourself, through albums, radio etc
Measurement of level
9. Do you watch music videos?
-Measurement of engagement and interest outside of normative music listening
10. Do you follow any music artists on social media?
-Measurement of engagement with the experience of music outside of physically listening to musi
11. If so, how many on average
12. Do you listen to music…
-Measuring frequency of tim
13. How many 'favorite' music artists do you have?
-Measuring how likely people are to like more than 1 artist
-Measuring engagement with ‘favorites’

From these initial questions, it was found that 96% of people responded that they love music, while 3.85% responded no. On the other hand, all respondents claimed to enjoy music. These two questions display that most people are active in their daily engagement with music. From there, the straightforward question “When you listen to music are you interacting with the platform directly (i.e. are you on your phone on the app, or online on the website), or do you passively listen (i.e. press play and just let the cue of music go)”, yielded 65% of respondents expressing that they actively engage with their music and digital media while listening, and 20% claimed they passively listen. When asked further about the frequency with which people look for new music, respondents most frequent answer was ‘Once a week’ followed by ‘More than once a week’ and ‘Every day’, displaying highly engaged audiences in finding and maintaining new music. In finding and exploring new music, platform recommendations were #1on the initial survey of responses, followed by actively looking for music themselves.

Aside from the digital experience of music on the actual platform, fans are able to engage and follow their favorite artists on a variety of social media pages. When asked, “do you follow any music artists on social media?”, the majority of surveyors answered yes, with one respondent voicing no. This displays the prevalence of individuals engaging in their musical experiences and preferences displaced from the actual auditory experience of music. Most people who answered ‘yes’ to this question also voiced that they follow anywhere from 1 to 5 artists on social media.

In asking the most basic of questions to measure engagement and activity in music, most people responded that they listen to music ‘very frequently’, meaning they listen to more than 20 songs per day. This answer was followed in frequency by ‘always’, which worked to classify engagement with music during the majority of waking hours. Through all these initial survey responses, we are able to see the popularity of the extent of our engagement with technology, digital media, platforms, and people in our interaction with music.

Conclusion

After examining genre preferences in reference to personality, platform preferences based on relevant statistics, and engagement based on the passive and active dichotomy, we come back to the initial ponderance of ‘Are We Gadgets’? Through the smartness of technology and digital platforms, and the ability for third parties to predict our preferences, have we lost our autonomy and individuality to a system of data and numbers that minimizes us? My answer to both of these questions is no. We see studies dating back to the early 20th century, well before gramophone records were invented, that link positive cognitive and social effects to the experience of music. Platforms ability to use algorithms to predict our preferences enhances our ability to find music we enjoy, and stay current in finding new material. This discovery of new music is then shared to others through a system of media communication and dissemination, vocal recommendations, sharing, and yes, more algorithms to generate commonalities, allowing us to connect musically with people both near and far, and venture into unexpected music territories. If you decide the environment, song, playlist, or genre is not to your liking, platforms will respond and adjust to your wants and needs. This interplay of transmitting our preferences on digital platforms to therefore result in more fine-tuned music libraries for ourselves and others, makes us the initial catalyst for change in digital music and platforms. To put it simply; We are the catalysts, the Device is the means, and the Music is the medium. Through our psychological and cognitive experience with music in the digital era, I conclude we are not yet gadgets themselves, but are the pivotal instigators and regulators of what technology and digital media is and will be in the future.

Citations and References

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10. Malgorzata Kopacz; Personality and Music Preferences: The Influence of Personality Traits on Preferences Regarding Musical Elements, Journal of Music Therapy, Volume 42, Issue 3, 1 October 2005, Pages 216–239

11. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic,Viren Swami, Adrian Furnham, Ismail Maakip , (Jan 2009). A Replication in Malaysia Using Structural Equation Modeling. School of Psychology and Social Work, University Malaysia Sabah, Malaysia. http://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/abs/10.1027/1614-0001.30.1.2.

12. David M. Greenberg, Simon Baron-Cohen, David J. Stillwell, Michal Kosinski, Peter J. Rentfrow, (Jan 2015). Musical Preferences are Linked to Cognitive Styles https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0131151

13. Huron D. B. (2006). Sweet anticipation: Music and the psychology of expectation. MIT press.

14. Juslin P. N., & Laukka P. (2003). Communication of emotions in vocal expression and music performance: Different channels, same code?. Psychological bulletin, 129(5), 770.

15. Steinbeis N., Koelsch S., & Sloboda J. A. (2006). The role of harmonic expectancy violations in musical emotions: Evidence from subjective, physiological, and neural responses. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18(8), 1380–1393.

16. Trainor L. J., & Zatorre R. J. (2009). The neurobiological basis of musical expectations. The Oxford handbook of music psychology, 171–183

17. Rentfrow, Peter J.; Gosling, Samuel D. (1 January 2003). "The do re mi's of everyday life: The structure and personality correlates of music preferences". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

18. McCown, William; Keiser, Ross; Mulhearn, Shea; Williamson, David (1997). "The role of personality and gender in preference for exaggerated bass in music". Personal Individual Differences.

19. Brown, R.A. (1 November 2012). "Music preferences and personality among Japanese university students". International Journal of Psychology

20. Langmeyer, Alexandra; Guglhör-Rudan, Angelika; Tarnai, Christian (October 2012). "What do music preferences reveal about personality: a cross-cultural replication using self-ratings and ratings of music samples". Journal of Individual Differences.

21. Chamorro-Premuzic, Tomas; Gomà-i-Freixanet, Montserrat; Furnham, Adrian; Muro, Anna (August 2009). "Personality, self-estimated intelligence, and uses of music: A Spanish replication and extension using structural equation modeling". Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.

22. University Research: Sonal Ahuja http://consumerresearch.georgetown.edu/research/the-streaming-music-market/

23. Rawlings, D; Ciancarelli, V. (October 1997). “Music Preference and the Five-Factor Model of the NEO Personaily Inventory”. Psychology of Music.

24. http://www.spring.org.uk/2013/09/10-magical-effects-music-has-on-the-mind.php

Statistics:

https://www.statista.com

https://www.statista.com/topics/2075/spotify/

Class Readings:

1. Lucas Hilderbrand, 2007. Youtube: Where Cultural Memory and Copyright Converge. FILM QUART, Vol. 61 No. 1, Fall 2007; (pp. 48-57)
2. Marwick, A. (in press, 2015). “You May Know Me From YouTube: (Micro)-Celebrity in Social Media.” In A Companion to Celebrity, Marshall, P.D. and Redmond, S., Eds. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

MENSTRUAL EDUCATION OF WOMEN AND ADOLESCENT GIRLS IN THE VILLAGES OF RURAL DHARAMSALA